DAIRY MEETING. '^J 



bt present all the time. An animal with disease in the lungs 

 may not ordinarily give off germs, but just as sure as the dis- 

 ease may be spread through the blood vessels and the lymphatics, 

 just so sure the germs may find their way out of the animal 

 through the milk at any time. We are not justified in regarding 

 the milk from tuberculous cows in any stage as being entirely 

 safe food for other animals. 



METHODS OF PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF THE DISEASE. 



The disease is not curable, according to our present light. 

 There has been a great deal of study put right on this subject 

 of finding a way to cure tuberculosis in cattle, but up to the 

 present time no reliable method has been discovered, though 

 sometimes animals do recover. Failing of a cure, what shall 

 we do? There has been just as earnest search, perhaps, in 

 recent years when there has been some little encouragement, to 

 find a preventive for this disease as to find a remedy. This is 

 an age of vaccines and lymphs for rendering animals immune, 

 and for at least sixteen years different investigators have been 

 trying to discover means for the prevention of this disease. 

 Different methods have been used. Tuberculin was tried for 

 this purpose. Sound animals were inoculated repeatedly with 

 the hope that it might protect them against infection, and there 

 was some little evidence that they were protected, in a degree. 

 Animals constantly injected with tuberculin are not likely to take 

 the disease, but the protection seems to be only temporary and 

 not very sure. Next they tried the injecting of the dead bacilli. 

 These cultures grown in the laboratory were killed by heat and 

 the beef tea and the dead germs were injected and some measure 

 of protection was gained in that way. But up to the present 

 time it has not been found a very satisfactory way of protect- 

 ing animals. Another method that bears some relation to the 

 Pasteur method of vaccination for the cure, or prevention of 

 rabies is by the use of the living germs. Now at first that seems 

 a little peculiar, that we would deliberately inoculate cattle with 

 this germ of tuberculosis while it is still alive with the view 

 of getting any good results. But it had been discovered that 

 while the living germs right from an animal that is suffering 

 from tuberculosis, a cow, for instance, injected into another 



